Important people

Ch. 1

- Thales
o Earliest pre-Socratic Greek philosopher
o Emphasized water as the most basic element in the universe
- Heraclitus
o Emphasized the ambiguous relationship between stability and change
o Unity of opposites
- Zeno
o Famous for describing paradoxes deriving from the concept of infinity
- Protagoras
o Argued for concentration on strictly human issues and problems (sophist)
o Asserted “Man is the measure of all things”
- Hippocrates
o School of followers, the Hippocratics, collectively produced the
naturalistic humoral theory in a body of writings known as
the Hippocratic Corpus
- Socrates
o Teacher of Plato
o Emphasized the nativist view that genuine knowledge resides within
the individual and needs to be brought out by skillful questioning
o “Know thyself” primary goal
- Xenophon
o Student of Socrates who provided one of the few first-hand accounts of
his teachers, and went on to become a famous historian
- Plato
o Founder of Academy who promoted rationalism, idealism and nativism
o Distinguished between the empirical, sensory appearances of
things,and the abstract, ideal forms that underlie them
o Socratic dialogues
o Psyche has three basic components (appetites, courage and reason)
- Aristotle
o Promoted empiricist view that knowledge derives from experience
and observation of the external world, which are organized into
categoriesin the mind
o Wrote the first systematic and highly influential treatises on the
functions of the psyche “On the Psyche” (vegetative soul,
sensitive soul, rational soul)
o Great polymath and compiler of knowledge in many fields
- Theophrastus
o Colleague and friend of Aristotle, his work on plant classification
complemented Aristotle’s on animals
- Democritus
o Contemporary of Socrates who promoted the atomic theory, the
notionthat the material universe is composed of tiny indivisible atoms
interacting
- Epicurus
Accepted the atomic theory of Democritus and founded the
Gardenschool, where he promoted a lifestyle marked by a
moderate and socially conscious hedonism
 - Lucretius
o Writer who celebrated the atomic theory and Epicureanism in the
extended poem “De Rerum Natura” (On the Nature of Things)
- Al-Kindi
o Islamic philosopher
o Helped translate classical Greek writings into Arabic
o Introduced and promoted the revolutionary system of Indo-Arabic
numerals
- Alhazen
o Islamic scholar and scientist
o Work on optics and visual perception laid foundations still
recognizedtoday
o Book of Optics and Camera Obscura
- Avicenna
o Wrote Canon of Medicine, a definitive medical text for many centuries
o Wrote Book of the Cure (ignorance), a monumental exposition of
and commentary on Aristotle that profoundly influenced the
scholastic philosophers in medieval Europe
o Floating man thought experiment
o External senses, internal senses, mind exists independent of the body
- Leonardo Fibonacci
o Encountered the system of Indo-Arabic numerals in north Africa and
introduced it into Europe
- Thomas Aquinas
o Reintroduced into Europe Aristotelian and other classical Greek ideas
after encountering them in translations of Avicenna
o Integrated them with Christian theology and was sainted posthumously
o De Rerum Natura rediscovered and introduced into Europe

Ch. 2

- René Descartes
o Promoted an interactive dualism between the material body and
the immaterial mind/soul
o Proposed mechanistic explanations for most bodily functions,
insisted that the highest functions of rationality, consciousness, free
will and self-awareness were non-mechanistic attributes of a
rational soul, with a store of innate ideas.
o Foundation for the modern distinction between body and mind led to
the question of the extent to which mechanistic analysis can explain
higher psychological processes
o Had a dream and an inspiration for his method, writes but suppresses
publication of “Le Monde”
o Published “Discourse on Method”
o Correspondence with Elizabeth of Bohemia results in Passions of the
Soul (passions).
- Galileo Galilei
o Discovered the moons of Jupiter, analysed living bodies in terms of their
physical characteristics, and promoted a theory of primary and
secondary qualities similar to Descartes’s theory of simple natures,
around the same time
- John Locke
o Contemporary of Leibniz who theorized that the human mind was like a
tabula rasa (blank slate) at birth and that the vast majority of human
knowledge comes thought experience, a position knows as
empiricism
o Founder of the movement known as British associationism
o Wrote An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
- Robert Boyle
o Strongly influenced Locke, established the Royal Society of London,
and conducted a famous experiment demonstrating what came to be
known as Boyle’s law, which holds that the volume of gas varies
inversely with the pressure upon it
- Anthony Cooper
o Became the patron, friend and chief supporter of Locke
- William Molyneux
o Whose question whether a congenitally blind person, suddenly
grantedvision, would immediately be able to distinguish a cube from
a sphere only by sight, stimulated Locke
- Thomas Hobbes
o Promoted the notion of the social contract and the idea that
human reasoning is a form of mathematical-like calculation
- Damaris Masham
o Friend of Locke and hosted him as a paying guest at her estate in
England during his last years
o Also corresponded with other leading philosophers, including Leibniz
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
o Exhibits his mechanical calculator in London
o Writes but withholds publication of New Essays on
Human Understanding
o Contemporary of Locke who proposed a system for understanding the
world as being composed of dynamic entities called monads
o Differed from Locke in likening the human mind not a blank slate at birth,
but rather a veined slab of marble predisposed to be sculpted into
someshapes more than others
o His invention of binary arithmetic and promotion of the idea that logical
processes can be performed by a calculating machine were both
formative influences on the development of computers
- Benedict Spinoza
o Promoted a view known today as pantheism, the idea that God is not
an independent being that controls the universe, but rather that God is
the entire universe
o Had an unacknowledged influence on Leibniz
- Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
o Developed the modern microscope and influenced Leibniz’s theory
ofthe cosmos by showing him microorganisms swimming in pond
water
- Sophie Palatine
o Youngest sister of Elizabeth of Bohemia, who became the major friend
and supporter of Leibniz at Hanover
- Sophie Charlotte
o Daughter of Sophie Palatine, who was an intellectually sophisticated
friend and self-described disciple of Leibniz
- George Berkeley
o Applied Locke’s associationistic principles to the systematic analysis of
 visual depth perception, arguing that it is a learned capability
- David Hartley
o Attempted to integrate associationism with neurophysiology by
arguing that specific ideas are caused by minute vibrations in
specific locations of the brain and nerves
- James Mill
o Has a proponent of empiricism and associationism
o Strongly influenced his son John Stuart Mill
- John Stuart Mill
o Claimed that the most important individual differenced among
peoplearise from associationistic and empiricist principles,
rather than from innate factors
Ch. 3

- Thomas Willis
o Studied brain anatomy in unprecedented detail and made the
fundamental differentiation between grey and white
matter
o Published the first accurate Anatomy of the Brain, illustrated with plates
by the architect Christopher Wren
o First detailed brain drawing
- Franz Josef Gall
o Demonstrated the general importance of the brain for all higher human
functions, while also originating the popular 19th century movement
known as phrenology
o Brain and body are crossed
- Johann Kaspar Lavater
o Promoted the art of physiognomy, or reading character from
thephysical signs of the body, usually the face
- Pierre Flourens
o Ablation studies in animals contradicted Gall’s phrenology
andsuggested that the brain’s cortex functions as a unified
whole
o Also revealed the importance of the cerebellum in coordinating
and integrating movements
- Jean Baptiste Bouillaud
o Argued in favour of a language and speech area localized in the
brain’s frontal cortex, while rejecting localized functions elsewhere in
the brain.
o Influenced his son in law Aubertine
- Ernest Aubertine
o Theory of speech localization based on a case study of a brain-
injuredsoldier brought renewed attention to this idea
- Paul Broca
o Surgeon who seriously and effectively challenged Flourens’ conception
of an undifferentiated cerebral cortex
o Starting with the brain of his famous patient Tan who suffered from
motor aphasia, he localized speech functions in a left frontal brain
region, Broca’s area
- Gustav Fritsch & Eduard Hitzig
o Together they discovered the cortical motor strip through electrical
brain stimulation experiments
- David Ferrier
o Neurologist who demonstrated several functionally distinct centres in
 the cortex (visual and auditory), in addition to Broca’s area and the
motor strip
- Carl Wernicke
o Neurologist who used localization theory as the basis of an influential
theory of aphasia
o Identified the brain area associated with the comprehension of speech,
Wernicke’s area
- Roberts Bartholow
o One of the first to conduct electrical brain stimulation experiments on a
conscious human subject
- Wilder Penfield
o Neurosurgeon who used brain stimulation on conscious human
patients to seek new surgical treatments for intractable cases of
epilepsy
o Discovered the interpretive cortex (interpretive and experiential
responses) and showed how the stimulation of other brain areas were
associated with different types of sensations andmemories
- Shepherd Ivory Franz
o Trained Lashley and studied the effects of cortical ablations on cats
o Innovated the method of combining surgical ablation with
animal training
- Karl Spencer Lashley
o Known for his study of learning and memory
o His ablation studies on animals suggested that memories are not
localized at one part of the brain but rather are distributed
throughout
- Donald O. Hebb
o Published The Organization of Behaviour, relating learning and other
behaviour to the hypothetical functioning of neurological networks in the
brain that he called cell assemblies
- Brenda Milner
o Neuropsychologist known for her case study of the brain-injured patient
H.M. who lost the capacity for short-term memory
o Established the role of the hippocampus in forming recent
memories, proposed the idea of two types of memory systems:
Working and long-term memory
o Distinguished declarative from procedural memory

Ch. 4

- David Hume
o Publishes a sceptical analysis of the notion of causality
o Formalized the laws of association by contiguity and similarity, whose
application of Lockean empiricist and associationistic principles led him
to question the concept of causality, thus simulating Kant to develop his
critical philosophy
- Immanuel Kant
o Program of critical philosophy emphasized the role of an active mind
in creating the phenomenal or subjectively experienced world in
terms of innate intuitions and categories, after interacting with an
ultimately unknowable noumenal world